4 June 2010

Beauty Bicycles from Sweden!

Here's a vintage ad for Swedish bike brand Monark, from the 1950's. The Swedish nickname for these upright ladies bicycles was 'beauty bicycles' or 'beautycyklar'. Doesn't that fit perfectly with Cycle Chic?! Wonderful.

Check out the lovely skirtguard on the first bicycle featured. When the lady at 0:20 walks out of the back, they compare the lines of her jacket to the lines of the bicycle.

This is vintage Cycle Chic. This is how it used to be. This is how we're making it again. We're loving it.

Monark, I remember well that as a kid I had a Monark bicycle, of the style that would come to be called a cruiser, when the bike market began to differentiate in the early 70s.

So how did a Swedish bike come to be in South Texas, along the Texas-Mexico Border?

At that point, I had seen exactly ONE 'foreign' brand bicycle a 10 speed Peugeot, which was the subject of much laughter, locally. All the roads around us were sand/caliche/gravel mix, and if dry you'd sink into the sand, and if raining, you'd be buried/clogged up with the Caliche mud, that would dry rock hard.

Was their a US factory, or was it originally a US brand? As I recall, the bolts were all SAE standard, not metric, and I had 2.25-2.5 inch wide tires mounted on it.

Klaus, To prevent further rusting after rust has been removed drip a few drops of 'motor oil' (lubricant ) on the cleaned spots and 'rub' down/off completely with soft cloth or kitchen towel, regularly .. once a month or so(?). 'Patina' is appealing to some :).L.

At http://www.monark.se/ there are a few other videos as well. In one, from the factory at Varberg, they mention that Monarks were manufactures in Brazil as well. Monark are responsible for the Swedish post service bikes and has "civilian" cargo bikes as well, http://www.monarkexercise.se/default.asp?PageID=724

That's such a nice video. I'm looking down towards the Monark "factory" (they only assemble them there these days) as I type this :) My mom still has a Monark from the 50's. It was her High School graduation gift. Nowadays kids get cars instead :( It's especially crazy in the US where children get cars for their "Sweet 16". Talk about car culture.